They're doing a similar thing in Japan using social media. They collect a bunch of data from the twitterers out there, and run it through massive processing, compiling all of the information and then using machine learning algorithms to map the hot spots where negative events are happening. So like if someone types "gun shot" into twitter, it will recognize the word, look for similar words in that location, and decide based on the data if it's a hot spot or not. People can then go online and check if it's safe to travel where they want to go.

That kind of technology processing is on the rise (Big Data), and is essentially the incoming rising wave that is going to float all boats in our economy again.

Algorithms kick ass, they're scary. We've been working on one to predict ied's for our troops in Iraq. I'm waiting for the Damn thing to become self aware.